Contributor: Tony Rauch

- -

I find myself floating through the sky, sitting in a strange mechanical device. It looks like an old, brass canoe – but with the front and back gradually tapering to curl up at the ends, with long canvas wings and delicate mechanical gears controlling it – fragile gears, rods, and thin levers at my side projecting from the curving floor. I don’t know how to control this thing. I’m afraid to even touch anything, so I look around in wonder as I drift through soft white clouds, floating gradually on a slow, gentle breeze.

It’s as if everything in the sky that was once old is now new again, for I see palatial mansions appearing through the clouds. Some are up close and some are scattered in the misty distance. It looks as if the mansions are built on the clouds. Large weeping willows surround their yards. The houses and trees in the distance look grainy and hazy, as if semi-transparent - as if they’re there and yet not there, as if stuck between time, caught between realities.

I pass so close to one large ornate house that I can see inside its big windows. It has rooms of decorative wood and burgundy carpets and chandeliers. In back there is an elaborate classical garden with a fountain and formal hedges circling the yard.

Then there is a brick lined sidewalk with a fancy iron fence and street lamps. I approach another tall, brick house with a steeply sweeping mansard roof and iron work running around the top. Inside the corner turret I see one of my cousins. She is looking out the window. She recognizes me and waves with a sudden, surprised smile. I watch as I slowly pass. I smile and wave. She runs from the window, as if running for the door. She runs around the side of the house and begins running along my gently floating sky boat. “Pull the lever,” she waves and slows as she knows I am drifting away. “Slow down. Come inside,” she calls, trotting in the mist.

“I don’t know how!” I call back, kind of loud, but yet kind of quietly at the same time, as if I don’t want to wake anyone or disturb anything.

“The lever!” she cries and points, “Pull the lever!”

My head darts - looking to my sides, looking to the floor. “Which one?” I shrug. There are several golden brass rods shooting up at my sides. I don’t know which to pull. I should pull one, anyone, to try and stop, but for some reason I just can’t seem to decide. This is a familiar feeling – too startled in a moment to react. So I just stay there, stuck, unable to do anything. My cousin turns to mist and becomes transparent with the brick houses and full trees and everything else in the crystalline, celestial distance, and the moment is gone as if slipping away into forever. And at that instant I remember my cousin had died a long time ago. She fell asleep one night and never woke up again.

I continue through the milky fog, strands of clouds waving by like twisting blankets and long strings. I wonder if she wanted to get into the sky boat with me. If she did, would it bring her back to the living again? But she asked me inside. What would that do, if I went inside? Maybe this is a dreamland? One of several perhaps. Maybe she fell asleep and ended up lost here, unable to get out, and thus unable to wake again for some reason.

Then I see a clearing to the side with a tall gazebo. A brass band is playing in front of it. There are some people scattered about before the band, dressed in their best clothing – women in flowing frilly dresses with parasols on their shoulders, and men in tight suits with tall top hats holding fancy canes. The band is dressed in navy blue uniforms with gold tassels and trim. They wear tall, furry hats. There are only a few band members though. There are spaces between some of the band members where I can only assume others should be standing. Their music is hard to hear through the gusts of breeze and the long distance. What I hear is an incomplete, fractured sound – something almost beautiful, poetic, and inspiring, and yet at the same time somehow completely beautiful and inspiring in its incompleteness, in its wanting to be more.

I turn to watch, but continue floating on. The band passes my view to disappear into the soupy mist of the distance. Another small boat machine appears ahead, but is passing directly in front of me, right-to-left, about two hundred feet ahead and thirty feet above. It glimmers a golden brown. Three large mouse-like beings appear to be riding in it, sitting in a row, one in front of the other. One is wearing a green derby and plaid vest.

Then I pass a field. There is long grass, then some short plants with big leaves in the distance. I notice some figures in the field. Five of them. Their backs are turned. As I pass I see they are tending to the fields, dressed in workers’ overalls, and bending and digging with long sticks. One bends and pulls something up, what looks like a head of lettuce. The figure turns in my direction and peels away some of the leaves. The figure is a hunched-back beast of some type, with curls of dirty blond hair obscuring its face and several large horns curling out of either side of its head. It is peeling away the leaves to reveal a baby in its large clawed hand.

More trees appear, getting thicker and thicker, and I veer around them, as if my mind is controlling the steering of the sky boat. The trees are thick old willows, twisting and leaning, draping me in a silky shadowland. There is a small wooden hut in the trees and a woodsman walking away, carrying a wicker basket at his side. A yellow cloth covers the basket. Then there is a little winding creek filled with large stones and a stone bridge curving to arch over it under a thatch of thick trees.

Then there is a series of small stone houses. Some have tall turrets on their corners, others have tall, curving roofs with small dormer windows. On some houses the dormers are tall and narrow, on others they are low arches. The area is overgrown with plants and trees. Then there is a small clearing, like a town square. Several people are in it and playing what looks to be a strange form of baseball – the diamond is a square with four bases instead of three. There is an ornate bandstand behind home plate with pointy spires or finials on the tall, curving roof. This viewing area is half filled with well dressed people. They are watching the game at hand. Some of the people have the heads of great lizards with scales that glisten green and purple and gold, while many of the others have regular people heads. The players in the field are wearing floppy uniforms that look too large for them. They are adorned with a strange large symbol on their left chests, as if an insignia of some sort. There are two batters standing on either side of home plate, one slightly behind the other as to not hit one another as they swing at the pitched balls. There are two pitchers. One swings and misses, while the other manages to make contact. He runs to the base on his left and another runner on a different base runs to the same base from the other side. Unfortunately, I wander on before I can report anything further.

I pass into more trees for a moment. Then the trees thin and I pass another of these machines. As I come closer to it I notice my friend, Parker, is in it. She is sitting and taking it all in, just like me. I smile in recognition as she moves closer. “Hi, Parker,” I grin, “This sure is a strange place, isn’t it? How do you suppose we got here?”

“I don’t rightly know,” she answers in wonder.

“Should we hop out and run around?” I call, “Maybe go into one of the houses?”

“Oh no, I don’t think we’d wanna do that,” she swallows hard. “We probably shouldn’t go in there, go in any of ‘em. . . I got a feeling this is the land of the dead or something,” she is working the levers to slowly steer her machine to spin around to be next to mine. “I’m afraid if I get out, we’ll be stuck here forever.”

“You’ve been here before?” I ask as I look down, through the clouds that reveal another rolling field about fifty feet below me.

“Oh, yeah. A couple of times now,” she shrugs as she slowly spins and settles to rest at my side, “I think this is the land of the dead, or half-dead anyway.”

“When you’re sick or something? Or are we both just dreaming?” I ask.

“No. Not when I’m really sick or anything. And I don’t think this is all just a vague dream. I just find myself here. Sometimes. But not often. But I’ve learned to kind of control this boat thing and steer things. . .” she slows up along side me and bobs gently on the slight breeze.

“Really? Wow. Can you show me how to?”

“Yeah, I guess,” she shrugs. “It’s like everything else, I suppose. You just have to learn how. . . It just takes practice.”

We drift ahead, into some curtains of fog. There is a strange creature that comes into view. It looks like a tall penguin – at least four feet tall, but not a penguin, but something penguin-like, or penguin-shaped. It has short white fur all over and short, flap-like arms running down its sides. It waves at us as we glide past, five or six flap-like arms rising slightly on one side. “Hey,” it says in a thin, human-like voice. “First time here?”

“How’s it goin’?” I nod casually. “Yeah, first time for me, but not for her,” I nod over to Parker as we gradually slide by.

“Well, enjoy your stay,” it says as we drift on, “It never seems to last as long as you think it should.”


- - -
Tony Rauch has three books of short stories published – “I’m right here” (spout press), “Laredo” (Eraserhead Press), “Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press). He has additional titles forthcoming in the next few months.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Tony Rauch

Contributor: Linda M. Crate
- -

It was autumn, the trees were shedding their brightly colored leaves, and a rush of orange tiger lilies came sweeping in like a tide. They were freckled in small brown dots, like the ones spattered down her cheeks and arms. She pulled strands of dark brown hair from her equally as dark hickory eyes. These were beautiful days, days where she couldn't tell where he ended or she began. She could never explain that to anyone, none of them seemed to understand. Only he seemed to have that capacity to read her as thoroughly as a book.

She hoped she were a novel worth reading. She sat upon her favorite rock in the back yard, a large stone hidden in the bosom of thistles and trees, pondering the meaning of love and life and everything inbetween.

She had been married for three years already, but the twenty six year old still had many unanswered questions. Life wasn't an easy mystery to unravel. Sometimes she threw down lemons, and other times she lifted you into the golden splendor of sun star moments. Kiki didn't think she'd ever understand why things fell apart or even why or how they sometimes knitted themselves together more perfectly than a dream.

She had a life before she had married Nolan Crest. Yet that seemed like a dream borne years ago wrapped into another dream.

She didn't sacrifice her dreams for her husband. Nolan had been the only thing she had yearned for in life when she had been sixteen. She then soon flowered and blossomed burgeoning ideas of her own for what she wanted in life, but he had always been a part of it for as long as she could remember. She could scarce remember her childhood dreams for many of them had died in the chill of winter's frost.

Kiki had always wanted to be a fire fighter, and Nolan didn't stand in her way. She loved her job, but she also loved those precious rare moments where she didn't have to run into the flames. She had always been brave, but sometimes the fires scared her. As if one day, they would burn away all those attributes that made Nolan happy - that one day he would turn away from the crone that lived in the shell of her semblance. Yet when she had exposed these fears to him, he had laughed. He told her that no matter what happened he would always love her.

Autumn was magical for her, and it went beyond the pretty colors and the way she felt connected to the earth in that season. It was this month three years ago that Nolan had proposed to her - in the middle of a snow covered November's ground. She had been ice skating with him when he popped the question, and she had to admit she was impressed. She hadn't thought he had an original thought in his head when it came to things like that. Later she would come to find it was her sister's idea when Nolan begged her for an idea that wasn't so cliché as her favorite place to dine out or even a movie theater. Though, she hadn't known anyone that had become engaged there, he could have probably went with that idea and she'd have been just as happy. But Nolan was something of a perfectionist, and he always wanted to make her smile.

Kiki smiled warmly at that thought. Her husband was such a thoughtful man. He always had been a good person, that's why she had fallen so madly in love with him, and she knew that love would never die no matter how many winters came in, trying to blow them apart.


- - -
Linda Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. She has a Bachelor's in English-Literature from Edinboro University. Her poetry and short stories have been published in several magazines.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Linda M. Crate

Contributor: Richard Colman

- -
‘…Now for the last time, go brush your teeth and get straight to bed.’ Said little Matthew’s babysitter, starting to get irritated now. Who would have thought it would be this hard to get rid of the little brat?

‘But it’s only eight o’clock.’ Argued little Matthew, refusing to budge from the settee. ‘My Mum and Dad always let me stay up to at least half nine on a Saturday, sometimes until ten!’

‘You’re like an annoying broken record you are kid. Now do as you’re told! Or else I’m gonna tell your parents how much trouble you’ve been tonight. Let’s see how long they’ll let you stay up after that.’

‘But that’s not fair!’ Cried little Matthew.

‘Life’s not fair kiddo, you best start getting used to it. Now go on, up you get. And the longer it takes you, the more bad stuff I’ll tell them about you.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Try me.’ Grinned the babysitter. Little Matthew jumped off the settee in a huff, and stamped his feet all they way up the stairs towards the bathroom. Stupid babysitter. He could still see a patch of daylight outside the window. Even some of the other kids in the street were still outside playing. She was right about one thing though; life was definitely unfair.

Matthew slammed the bathroom door shut behind him, as hard as he could. He got his frog-shaped toothbrush, put the multi-coloured toothpaste on it, turned the tap on and began to brush his teeth. What was she going to do down there anyway, except call all her friends for a long chat on the house phone? Maybe he should be the one grassing her up. But why bother? His parents were never going to believe him…

He was just nearly finished when he heard the low growl. It was like a slow rumble that echoed throughout the bathroom. Little Matthew turned his head round towards the bathtub. He walked towards it, and with his free hand he pulled back the shower curtain that hung all the way around the front side of the tub. The crocodile was lying perfectly still in it, baring all its shiny white and pointy sharp teeth, as though he was almost smiling at him. Matthew slowly pulled the curtain back, turned the tap off and put his toothbrush and the toothpaste back on the side. He then, very gradually, opened the bathroom door and walked out, all the while keeping eye contact with the bath where the crocodile lay, wary of any sudden movements. He closed the door behind him and walked back down the stairs. The babysitter was sitting in Matthew’s spot on the settee nattering away on the house phone as he suspected.

‘Hang on Jenny… What the hell did I just tell you?’ Said the babysitter, putting the phone down temporarily from her ear. ‘Get back up those stairs right now! Have you cleaned your teeth yet?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘So go to bed then! You’re already in enough trouble as it is. You actually want me to tell your parents that you didn’t behave? I’ll smash something and say it was you.’

‘But there’s a…’

‘How about this framed picture of your nanny? I’m sure you’ll get at least a couple weeks of being grounded for this.’

‘There’s a crocodile in the bathtub.’

‘Matthew! Stop telling fibs and get to bed.’

‘But I’m not lying!’ Pleaded Matthew.

‘Sorry Jenny,’ sighed the babysitter after picking back up the phone, ‘He’s having nightmares or something. I’ll call you back in a minute.’ She put the phone down and turned the volume to mute on the television. ‘What are you saying Matthew? You think there’s a boogieman in the bathroom?’

Matthew shook his head. He knew it wasn’t the boogieman; the boogieman lived in the wardrobe. ‘No, not the boogieman, I said there’s a crocodile in the bathroom.’

‘A crocodile? Good god Matthew; how old are you?’ Said the babysitter. ‘Go to bed and stop fooling around. I mean it.’

‘But shouldn’t we tell someone about the crocodile?’

‘Who then; the crocodile police? You’re really starting to get on my nerves now. Come on; I’m going to show you that there’s no crocodile and then put you to bed myself.’

She got up from the settee and nudged him up the stairs, with Matthew hesitantly being lead. They got to the bathroom, and the babysitter knocked twice on the closed wooden door.

‘Oh Mr Alligator? Are you in there? Open up if you are!’

‘Stop it!’ Whispered Matthew. ‘You’ll annoy him.’

The babysitter cackled with laughter, and began to open the door. ‘Let’s see how much we can annoy him then shall we? Oh snappy? Here snappy? Where are you boy?’ She walked right in and peered around the bathroom. Once she was fully in, little Matthew slowly closed the bathroom door behind her.

‘Hey numb nut, the lock’s on this side of the door! You thought you could lock me in here all night. Oh, boy, you are in so much trouble. You are so…’

The low, rumbling bass of a growl shook through every wall upstairs, and even more so against the bathroom door, followed by utter silence. Matthew waited for a few minutes, but couldn’t here another sound.

After a while, little Matthew thought that the old saying “let sleeping dogs lie” could also be said for crocodiles, so he slowly went downstairs, got some ice cream from the freezer in the kitchen, and sat up on the sofa to watch the late night horror movie on TV in peace; uninterrupted, until his parents came home.


- - -
Richard Colman is a novelist and short story writer focused mainly in Horror and Suspense, based in Hertfordshire, UK.
http://richardcolman.wordpress.com

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Richard Colman

Contributor: Tony Rauch

- -

I swear I heard them outside for at least a month beforehand. Every night I’d crawl into bed a little earlier than the night before, to see if I could catch that flickering little twitter of a noise. It was always a mere buzzing. Or a faint humming. Just hanging in the air. Milling in the distance. Barely perceptible. Like the distant buzzing of the street lamp down the road by the swamp. Or like the mumbling of the air conditioner at the gas station. I mean, I could barely hear them. But they were there, somewhere out in that wet darkness of night.

Every time the coal train whistled, whining far off, fading into all that endless emptiness way out there (that nothingness just waiting to be discovered, waiting for someone like me to happen along and fill it up), they stopped for a bit. But then they always started up again after awhile. Real slowly. After the train had passed the fields.

I swear, each night beforehand I could feel that warm little hum, that slight buzz, that little gathering, that secret conversation, getting closer and closer.

Then one night I just couldn’t sleep, so I dropped out my window and took a little stroll. I looked up at the night and all its worlds, thick and moist and endless, a comforting home. It wasn’t very dark out as the big-daddy of a moon was up there hanging big and low, illuminating everything a strange silver gray, spreading shadows across the grassy fields. So I could see pretty much everything I reckon - the hay barn, the tractor shed, the granary, everything illuminated by the glow from above. The sky was so clear and the moon so close. It was like I could just reach out and touch it all. It was like it was all right there for me, everything waiting for me to spin it into action.

I kept thinking about the future and where I’d be next year, where I‘d end up. Could be almost anywhere after the summer. That scared me a little. Yet it was also quite exciting - graduating from school and now being free to do whatever I could find.

That’s when I stumbled across them. That little murmur, that tiny, faint humming. As I was out walking, searching for that noise, I heard that long thin whisper in the current of wind. I just suddenly caught it, picked up on it as I was scanning all the silver stars blinking above like dust in the sunlight, as if each star was blinking just for me. I picked up on that far away buzz and followed it. The weird thing was the noise didn’t get any louder as I snuck through the fields and marsh and woods to them. It was always about the same, just hanging in the distance, just riding on the breeze. Finally, I crept up on them, slowly crawling through the dry brush as to not make a sound. I wondered who could be out here this late: some transients, migrant workers, hobos, some criminals maybe, some highwaymen, or maybe a spy ring or something. And then I happened upon them. I crouched through the leaves of bushes and tall grass. They were gathered in a little clearing I never even knew was out here. It was a little bare spot. Cleared out under a group of trees. In a circle of thick brush. In a gully out behind the barn. A half mile to the west. The area they had cleared out was only big enough for maybe five or six of them.

I crept up behind a group of bushes and spread the leaves back carefully, quietly. The back of one of them obscured my view. A small candle in the middle of them flickered an eerie amber glow. I moved around to get a look at their faces, to see who, or what, they were. They were wearing long overcoats with large hoods. And then I went stone numb. . . They were people, the likes of which I’d never seen or imagined before. Little people with large heads and strange, tiny, deep eyes. And that’s when I heard it, that murmur of a whisper, my blood turning to ice. I just froze. I couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe - “OK, then, it’s settled,” one of them exhaled a breathy wheezing whisper, “. . tonight we ask Billy to join us.”


- - -
Tony Rauch has three books of short stories published – “I’m right here” (spout press), “Laredo” (Eraserhead Press), “Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press). He has additional titles forthcoming in the next few months.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Tony Rauch

Contributor: Candy Caradoc

- -

The wishing well was situated, oddly, on the terrace outside the Café Voile. A shiny, gold and ivory, opulent-bordering-on-flashy attraction currently glittering in the moonlight. Also visible from the outside: crystal-clear windows (more glass than brick was that wall, and therefore impractical and wrong, as far as he was concerned), white tables with fancy chairs made of swirly-patterned metal, and the large, cursive lettering of the name above the main door. It’s all a rich-cunt’s fantasyland, he thought, what do they need a wishing well for, anyway?

He had stolen things in the past. Only minor things and only when he was in need. Apart from those incidents of mindless shoplifting in his school years, but which everyone grows out of and hardly count, he supposed. The issue was, he now believed, who you stole from.

So when he’d received an unexpected medical bill, overdue rent notice and extortionary car mechanic’s invoice all in the space of a week, he’d had a good hard think about where he could take some money without too much risk or too much damage to his conscience. And he had thought of the ridiculous wishing well outside that poncy café.

He’d only ever seen it from a distance. He couldn’t think what it could possibly have been if not a wishing well. And yes, sure enough, the cylindrical brickwork was half-filled with water and there were gold and silver coins, dully catching the light, at the bottom.

He had decided from the first that the easiest way to go about it would be to climb in, as long as it wasn’t too deep (it wasn’t) and he was prepared: he climbed in with his waterproof draw-string bag and, water level comfortably below the tops of his galoshes, got to work.

The idea popped into his head that some would accuse him of stealing other people’s hopes and dreams. His thoughts immediately addressed that issue, as though challenged (he had nothing better to occupy his mind, anyway). Firstly, he thought, these people are living every dream I ever dared to have, and then some. Secondly, who can really sum up their life’s aspirations in the flip of a coin? And, further to that, people rarely know what will actually make them happy. And finally, no one who spends about ten bucks on a slice of cake should be allowed to purchase their heart’s desire for a lousy fucking coin. Mere shrapnel cluttering up their designer purses. Dead weight next to their cheque books.

What about the innocent kiddies – is that what they would ask? Rich kids have it all and don’t even know what to do with it yet. Their problem, if anything, is having too much. Not to mention the irresponsibility of teaching susceptible minds to rely on fantasy. Bad enough that rich kids have the idea that they can sponge off their parents. Now they can sponge off the powers of a magical water-holder, too?

He was taking these coins, but he was giving something back: giving everyone a wakeup call. You want a castle? Get building. Want to be famous? Get your ass to an audition, and, preferably, hire an agent. And for God’s sake get some talent. And if you want to donate to the needy then by all means toss your coins away in some ridiculous, childish ritual meant to stuff further riches into your already glutted lives.

He’d finished – bag was damn heavy, too. These people liked a wish.

He climbed out and moved away from the empty well – a wishing well with no wishes to fulfil. He suddenly had the comical thought that a wishing well with no wishes on its “to-do” list may be so desperate for a purpose that it could actually grant a wish if someone would just give it a go – that even a supernatural fancy could get one thing right.

He stopped, reached into his pocket and fished around amongst the screwed up paper and cigarette stubs and rubber bands and gum till he found the small coin. Then he meditated for a moment before tossing the coin into the well.

He snorted sardonically at his own ridiculousness and walked away.

Well, fuck it, he thought. We all have a job to do, don’t we?

- - -
Candy Caradoc lives in Melbourne, Australia. Last year she completed a thesis on uncanny representations of the effects of narcissistic parenting in Hoffmann’s The Sandman and Aronofsky’s film Black Swan. One of her stories, about a woman in love with a straw man, appears in Dog Horn Publishing’s Women Writing the Weird.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Candy Caradoc

Contributor: Joseph Carfagno

- -
We sat on the couch crammed so tightly our legs were touching, the popcorn was on the table in front of us, we didn’t touch it, our favorite show was on, live from Paris, we saw it on tape delay, each week a new remarkable guest. The host, prone to logorrhea, strode to the podium.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very special show for you tonight. We’ll be talking to the smartest man in the world.”
The guest came on, he was thin, he wore a brown suit, he was a little shorter than medium height though that was probably due to the extraordinary smallness of his head, about two-thirds the size of an ordinary adult male’s. This head, in its mid-forties, had reached an advanced state of baldness, due, we conjectured, to the extraordinary brainpower it contained. Seated, he looked like a miniature. The host showed a short video clip that explained the origin of the guest’s intelligence. The usual authority provided the voiceover:
“Many people speak of synapses firing when they are engaged in profound or insightful thought. Though” – we were relieved didn’t say while – “it is true that sparks traverse our synapses when we think, we must still acknowledge the source and sustaining force of those thoughts. All thinking originates in the dendrites. By shrinking the gap between the dendrites, reducing the synapses to near nullity, thought becomes both more profound and quicker. Our guest became the smartest man in the world, a man who thinks as deeply as the Buddha and faster than any game show champion, by so compressing his synapses that his head, in natural sympathy, compacted.”
There were photos of the guest growing up, riding his bike and playing soccer as a boy, finishing off bicycle kicks, playing parts in university dramas -- that’s when his head started to shrink, it seemed normal before then -- his first job at the lab, and so on. The video ended with the guest, his tiny head filling up the camera, screaming at the top of his vocal range, “Dendrites are what matter! Dendrites make you smarter! Dendrites are all!”
The show broke for commercials. We remained silent, no one touched the popcorn, we were all silently wondering what amazing things the small man would say. The host came back. “Of course tightly packing the dendrites is merely a prerequisite, a necessary but insufficient condition, for extreme intelligence. They must also be cleverly arranged and have the power to originate and appreciate the most brilliant thoughts.” He sat down next to the guest, sipped some cold water, leaned over to him, and asked his first question. We all leaned forward for the answer, at last we’ll be enlightened, the camera zoomed in on him, we saw the tiny vocal cords quiver.


- - -
Joseph Carfagno was born in Brooklyn but lives in Connecticut.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Joseph Carfagno

Contributor: Tony Rauch

- -
I tell ya, they buzzed back and forth - high and low, wooshing in angles, cutting tight curves, zipping across the pale blue sky - bright silver disks, big and small - piercing puffy white clouds, thrusting overhead, zooming around and around, whipping in great wide arcs above the tree line - zipping up into the atmosphere, down over the yard, sailing back out to beyond, and then looping back again just like that - with shiny blueish silver glinting off the sun, streaking bright lines and flashes in the morning sky.

I gazed in awe, kneeling on the living room floor, my hands on the picture window. “Ah, Dad,” I finally collected myself to stammer, “Ya gotta see this stuff. . . Take a look. . . You’ll never believe what’s goin’ on out here. . .”

“Yeah, . .” my dad swallowed lazily. He was lying on the couch, reading the Saturday morning paper. “. . They been doin’ that all morning,” he rolled over, folding his arm over his face to hide his eyes from the crisp morning light. “I’m sure they’re just showin’ off. . . Just goofin’ on us,” he yawned. “Wake me if any of ‘em have the guts to actually land, or if one of ‘em knocks on the door or something.”


- - -
Tony Rauch has three books of short stories published – “I’m right here” (spout press), “Laredo” (Eraserhead Press), “Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press). He has additional titles forthcoming in the next few months.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Tony Rauch

Contributor: Troy Manning

- -
Tim’s house was fairly large and somewhat haunted. Most of the ghosts left him entirely alone and it is not good for a man to be that way. He would often try to talk to them but very seldom would he receive a reply.

Tim intentionally purchased a home near a cemetery so he might have company that he would neither have to provide for nor clean up after. The closest he ever came to that before were some sea monkeys he had as a child. They required nearly as little upkeep as the cactus he later was given as a housewarming gift.

The house in which Tim lived was a white North Carolinian manor. Just looking at it was enough to make one suspect it had ghosts. In the three years he lived there, Tim counted four of them. They were Kevin, Janet, Nancy, and Brad.

By far the tallest of the four was Nancy. She stretched to nearly eight feet. Tim knew this because he frequently heard the clinking of his chandelier that hung down six feet from a fourteen-foot ceiling. One could suppose she about stood five-feet tall and reached up the remaining distance with her arms, but Nancy didn’t have any arms. A pink sticker on her driver’s license said that any part of her body could be used in case of a medical emergency and those were the parts they used.

Coming in at just under five feet was Kevin. Compared with Nancy he was essentially a midget. Whenever he wanted to make the chandelier clink, he would have to use a stick or ask Nancy for assistance. Nancy was happy to oblige Kevin but when Tim would ask her to make some noise, the house would fall deathly silent.

Though only five foot three, Janet was easily the scariest of the bunch. Sometimes she would play with squeaky doors while at other times she would cause rotting flesh smells in different rooms of the house. Tim once asked her how she made those smells but she simply replied with a shrieking laughter that frightened him very much.

As for Brad, he was neither here nor there but sometimes everywhere all at once. Of the four, he was typically the most visible. Whereas the others were usually more effusive, Brad often took the form of a dense smoke. It brought Tim comfort, at times, to simply pull up a chair in the midst of him and reminisce about old flames.

Tim might never have known the names of his housemates if it weren’t for a friend that they all had in common. Cindy, one of those transient romances from Tim’s adolescence, reestablished contact with him through Facebook. He invited her to dinner and she, almost immediately, recognized the peculiar odor in the house as Janet. They often played together as children, Cindy explained, until Janet’s family moved away. Janet frequently suffered bouts of depression and burned her arms with cigarettes. As she seldom bathed, the sores would often putrify. Other than that, Janet was generally pleasant to be around.

Tim told her about his house’s other three inhabitants. By his descriptions, Cindy was able to put names to them as well. Recently, she had learned from a Tweet that Janet had been in a fatal car accident several years back while out on a double date. Janet, driving, lost control when Brad, her date, lit up a cigar then politely offered it to her. Nancy, an unusually tall girl who was keen on smaller guys, also succumbed in the crash, along with Kevin.

Though disturbed by this information, Tim took some comfort in knowing that those with whom he shared his home were practically his peers. Cindy soon joined the household through matrimony with Tim.

Becoming increasingly intrigued with things supernatural, Tim began attending a local seminary and was eventually ordained as an Episcopalian priest. While this made a few of the occupants uneasy, Father Tim assured them they could stay as long as there was no more smoking.


- - -
Troy Manning is a graduate of Westminster Seminary California. He has recently been taking literature classes at Cal State University, San Marcos where his stories have been published in the creative writing program's Cat Ate My Chapbook, Fierce Notes 1 & 2, and the Spring & Fall, 2010 issues of Oh Cat.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Troy Manning

Contributor: Gil C. Schmidt

- -

A lifetime… in nineteen seconds…

Harry London slammed chest-first into the rubble, his helmet flipping up and banging against a chunk of concrete as ragged as a scream. Heavy machine-gun bullets chewed the air and dirt around him as he struggled to merge his flesh with the cover he so desperately had run to.

Across the charred and mangled street, strewn with several bodies in uniform and gray tweeds, Gunther Meis swung his heavy Vickers machine-gun in a deadly spray, trying to catch up to the British soldier racing desperately across the clearing to leap for cover. The Vickers was unwieldy, the narrow tripod legs slipping on the dusty floor inside the crumbled building that once housed a druggist and his medicines. Gunther cursed as the soldier skidded behind a concrete slab, the bullets spanging to fly off in unknown directions. He stopped firing to scan the street again, and the empty windows of the few remaining houses across the way. He checked the belt and grunted, satisfied he had ammo to fire a full minute’s burst if he cared to. He shifted his weight, peered quickly over the parapet and ducked as a bullet whinged off to his left.

Harry curled up, holding his helmet steady. The strap was broken. He breathed a sigh of relief as the bullets stopped. Rolling slightly left, he peeked at the machine-gun’s nest and saw the German soldier adjusting the gun’s position. Harry quickly sighted his rifle above the parapet and stopped breathing, heart pounding like a drum in his chest. Suddenly, the German raised his head and Harry pulled the trigger. The bullet went high and Harry cursed, rolling fast to his right to avoid the onslaught of bullets he knew was coming. He twitched a grenade from his vest, pulled the pin and held the explosive in his hand, silently counting One… Two…

Gunther turned his head away to avoid the dust coming off the wall and lunged back to pull the Vickers’ trigger. Bullets tore at the edge of the concrete slab, reducing it by chunks and cracks from vertical ledge to air. Gunther roared as the Vickers fired, slamming the gun to the left to rip at the top of the slab, then down, hoping to bounce the heavy bullets into the enemy. He saw a green-gray object fly up from behind the slab, arcing its way across the dead street towards him, and without thought, yanked the gun up and to the left to intercept the grenade--the grenade!--his roar becoming a mad shriek of rage.

Three… Four… Bullets shredded concrete to dust behind him, then walked like heavy rain across the slab to tear it above his head. The bullets then dropped to smash brutally into the slab’s lower edge and pieces of cement peppered Harry’s backs and legs. The slab was no cover there! Five… He threw the grenade in a stiff-armed toss, just like he was taught in Bingham, the thick-bodied metal apple curving up and away. Harry imagined it was flying straight and true, aimed with deadly precision at the machine gunner. He heard the bullets rise, then rise again as the hammering they caused became buzzing until suddenly a shriek of rage became--

An explosion. The grenade blew up as Gunther’s aim crossed its path. The shriek of rage rose to become…
Harry acted without thought, rolling to his feet as the explosion shredded the air everywhere, tucking his rifle and leaping to his feet, his mouth erupting into a shriek of rage that joined the German’s shriek…

Gunther saw the British soldier rise like a spectre, like a demon, from the blast’s cloud, rifle at the ready, shrieking just as he was…

Harry saw the German, heard him shrieking and pulled the trigger…

The shriek ended as the bullets tore through Gunther’s head and neck.

Nineteen seconds… A lifetime. In nineteen seconds.


- - -
Gil C. Schmidt has been a regular submitter to Yesteryear Fiction since the early days when it was a daily magazine. His story "Initial Quantum State" is also featured in his book "Thirty More Stories." Get "Thirty Stories" and "Thirty More Stories" for free: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/gil-c-schmidt or http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/gilthejenius

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Gil C. Schmidt

Contributor: Tony Rauch

- -
I move to the south side. Mostly to try and get something done for once. Everyone I know hovers around the north side. When I lived up there, people used to stop by every now and then, which was nice, but eventually it impeded my progress. I couldn’t get anything done. I vowed to change, but eventually I had to move. I guess, for me, it just got to be too much of the same ol’ thing up there. I needed an infusion of newness.

Unfortunately, after some time on the south side things began to get lonely. Sure I was getting things done for a change, but it wasn’t the same. Life didn’t seem to have that spark and flash to it. Colors seemed to fade.

I thought about this a lot, finally deciding to get involved with things on the outside more, so I started a music club, that is a group of people who get together and listen and talk about music. I figured this was a good way to expose myself to professional appreciators like myself, to music I may not otherwise happen across, and to stay connected to the outside world.

Every other week we get together, each member bringing in a song or three that excites them, makes them happy or sad or sleepy or whatever. This week we’re meeting at Dade’s, but when I show up no one is listening to music. They’re all sitting around watching Hockey Night In Canada [a news show that reports on all things hockey, from the low juniors to the majors, including the European leagues, but basically the news is just an excuse to showcase the fights of the day, which are always dismissed by Donnie, the amiable host, merely as squabbles, spats, tiffs, and the like]. Now I like watching Hockey Night too, but it was time to appreciate music, not time to appreciate hockey fights.

“Why no music?” I ask, concerned, thinking maybe someone passed away.

“We can do that another time,” someone mentions absentmindedly, without taking their eyes from the television.

“But . . it’s music time. Not . . not hockey time. . .” I stammer to myself.

Everyone else sits there watching hockey highlights.

“I like watching hockey too,” I finally say, “But when are we going to rock-out? And with wild abandon?”

“Maybe later,” Ray Ray utters unconvincingly, stuck in a hockey highlight trance.

“Well, did they change the time for Hockey Night?” I look around, concerned.

“It’s on much earlier now,” someone stares at the television, swirls of color and action circling the screen.

I look around and sigh, “That’s disruptive.”

“Gotta roll with the changes, guy,” someone yawns, staring, mesmerized.

The TV hisses a bad apartment fizz: “. . inching Moose Jaw up two points in the Prince Albert Conference. And now onto Quebec City, where it seems Tommy Luc Quey is involved in a minor disagreement with Hamilton’s Pauly Pierre.” The announcer, a hearty little man named Donnie Cheety, who appears as if an effeminately dressed cartoon Leprechaun complete with compressed wiry frame, red face, bright orange hair, tidy beard, green plaid velvet suit (complete with little vest), and little pink bow tie. Donnie is, shall we say, the excitable type, but very serious and dour when it comes to the fisticuffs, as if each daily dust-up is somehow holding society together, as if poetic metaphors representing our own struggles, as if cathartic releases of our existential angst or ennui, as if mini operas dramatizing the human condition - man fighting himself, man fighting against his own limitations in an indifferent world, man struggling against the confinements of society - as if each tiff worked to excise our struggles of the day. The news of the day was just a frame to build tension and suspense, to put a context around the fighting, the existential release of incomprehensible forces.

So the action switches from Donnie in the studio to two grown men whaling away on one another, arms a blur, heads snapping, sweat flying, a tooth being dislodged. And the fight goes on for a while, a mechanical whirl of extremities in a pair of windmill blurs, Donnie muttering in a fatherly tone: “Now now boys,” although it is not clear to me what that comment is in reference to. Then towards the end of the fight, when the referees finally manage to work their way in to break it up, when the combatants are spent and noodley, the show switches back to the studio where Donnie is turned to the side, looking down at a monitor beside him with a grave look of concern. Finally he swivels to face the camera, “While in New Brunswick, new commissioner of the Royal Academy . . .”

“What about dinner?” I finally mutter, looking around as the action subsides to the business affairs of running leagues and drafting junior players.

“We don’t have to hang out every night, you know,” Ray Ray yawns, which pretty much stops me right in my tracks.

“We haven’t met in, like, three weeks,” I sigh, disappointed and confused.

“Have a seat,” someone walks past me, someone I’ve never seen before, “Apparently there’s some good action tonight.”

“We gonna listen to music after?” I look around hopefully, “I brought demo versions of . . .” I trail off, a little hurt.

“Which ones?” someone mutters unenthusiastically, slumping low on the couch, staring at the television, nibbling on Chex Mix from a bowl in his lap.

I look down at my satchel, hanging from my arm. “Ah, ‘Nobody Knows’ by Destroy All Monsters. And, ah, Sissy Bar’s cover of ‘Gin and Juice’. And, of course, the biggie: Sonic's Rendezvous Band’s epic ‘City Slang’.”

“That all?” the Chex Mix guy, another person I’ve never seen before, again mutters unenthusiastically, “Got any metal?”

“Ah, only some Hellhammer,” I shrug, “‘Ready For Slaughter’. All three-and-a-half minutes,” I report.

“Nothing longer, huh?” the guy on the couch manages to seem disappointed and uninterested (or unimpressed) at the same time.

“I think there’s an epic eight minute version out there. Maybe what I have is edited from some original longer version,” I sigh, thinking they won’t care anyway.

There’s a pause, then the guy on the couch with the snacks comments, “Hellhammer. Yeah, Hellhammer’s good,” he looks away to consider this a minute, “‘Ready For Slaughter’. . . Haven’t heard that in a while,” he nods to himself, thinking. “Ready For Slaughter.”

“All three-and-a-half minutes,” I nod.

The guy on the couch looks back over his shoulder and smirks, repeating, “That all, huh?”

“Yeah. Really,” I squint and shrug, “Wouldn’t a very brief song illustrate just how ready you are for slaughter? As apposed to a filibuster?” I gesture, “Because, to me, I’m not convinced. No. I don’t buy it. That statement strains credulity. I’m incredulous,” I announce to no one in particular, as if thinking out loud.

The guy on the couch looks away and nods again, “I know what you mean. It doesn’t seem like they’re ready for slaughter at all.”

“If anything, it sounds like they’re stalling,” I shrug.

“Really,” the guy on the couch thinks, turning back to the television, “Come on guys, get off your asses and get on with it already. Geez. . . Sounds like maybe their heart’s not really into it.”

“And if you’re not quite ready for slaughter just yet, then fine, take your time, we can wait,” I look over to the television, “Misplaced your keys. Your girlfriend’s annoying, unorganized friend needs a ride to the airport. You’re stricken with the ol’ ennui. Broke a shoelace. Forgot to set the alarm. Your boss flaked and you had to work late. We’ve been there. We understand. No hurry guys. Really. Anytime. Whenever you’re ready for slaughter, we’ll be right here,” I shrug.

“You know, I’m just not feelin’ it tonight,” Dade walks past me to the television, yawns, stretches, stopping at the television, then turns and wanders into the next room.

Finally the announcer on the television looks back into the camera, “Let’s check back to Quebec City, in on how Tommy and Paulie are hashing things out between themselves.” And the drama resumes with Tommy and Paulie twisting free of the referees’ grips and meeting to flail away at one another again, finally losing their balances, slipping to their knees, bear hugging one another to the ground, then laying on the ice, side by side, taking turns punching one another.

“A nice way to resolve their little issue,” Donnie chimes in boastfully as the referees grab Tommy’s and Paulie’s legs and drag them away from one another, bloody, sweat soaked, and spent. “Now, doesn’t that feel much better?” coos a supportive Donnie, “Nice to have that off your chest and out of your system, now isn’t it?”

Tommy and Paulie slowly sit up, then stand, the referees holding them up and ushering them away from one another. Again, Tommy catches his breath, twists to break away from the refs who are holding him, and goes after Paulie.

“That’s the way, Tommy,” Donnie comments, almost egging them on, as if within each fight could be found a little life lesson, “No reason to give up so easily. Can’t get anywhere if you just give up. . . Wheeeeeeere does giving up ever get you?”

The refs grab Tommy and try to pull him back, eventually one jumps on his back, slowing him down. They work him to his knees, twisting him away, then raising him and leading him off as he struggles to get free.

“You’ll all live much longer with that out of your system,” Donnie reasons heartily, “No need to keep things bottled up and festering.”

The scene shifts back to the studio where once again Donnie is turned to the side, gazing longingly into a monitor, as if reliving a cherished memory of youth. He has his fingers to his chin as if considering some mythic riddle of existence. Then he slowly moves his gaze back to the studio camera, “Nothing wrong with a hockey fight,” everyone repeats, including myself and Donnie, Donnie reporting sternly in his thick Canadian accent, his eyes aglow as the station fades to a commercial, but the rest of us repeat it as if some contemplative mantra, not as in a monotoned relaxation technique or philosophy, but more as if from an ingrained gene.

Finally, through the confusion, pain, disillusionment and hurt, I say, “What if you don’t know what your place in life is? . . What if you . . . don’t fit in anywhere?”

“Don’t worry,” Dade calls from another room, “Donnie just signed a new three year contract. . . He’ll be fine. . . Really.”

“Bad case of nostalgia acting up?” someone asks in a reporter’s monotone, as if mimicking Donnie, then hitting the mute button on the remote to turn off the sound as a laxative commercial comes on.

“Guess I was looking forward to . . .” I trail off, as if thinking, adjusting my satchel on my shoulder.

“Let’s hear that Hellhammer,” the guy on the couch shrugs, “Break it out, man. It’s only a commercial,” he nods to the television which glows patiently, staring like a devil’s eye.

“Apocalyptic Raids or Demon Entrails?” someone asks, referring to which album the song is from.

“Yeah, I could maybe use a good jolt. A short dose of Celtic Frost, or Discharge might hit the spot right about now,” someone looks off to the distance, thinking.

This perks me up a little. I smile, “Yeah. Yeah,” and step forward, as if to indicate ‘that might work’. “I’m not sure what it’s from though,” I turn to the stereo.

“Bad day, huh?” the guy on the couch asks as I step to the stereo, bend, and remove the compact disk from my satchel.

“Bad week,” I report. “Bad month. . . How’d you know?” I poke the buttons to activate the rockage, but the guy doesn’t answer. The music comes on, the operatic opening chords churning to gain a chugging momentum to gallop around the entire room. I stare at the floor to consider the artistry on display.

“Hey,” Dade calls from beyond, “What is that? . . Hey, . . turn that up.”


- - -
Tony Rauch has three books of short stories published – “I’m right here” (spout press), “Laredo” (Eraserhead Press), “Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press). He has additional titles forthcoming in the next few months.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Tony Rauch